


A Few Small Repairs

by keithyourpal



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Established Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Post-Kerberos Mission, Pre-Kerberos Mission, Sheith Week 2016: Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2018-07-31
Packaged: 2018-08-29 23:03:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8508970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/keithyourpal/pseuds/keithyourpal
Summary: Shiro returns, and Keith fights his feelings.





	1. Chapter 1

The wind roared around Keith, drowning out the tagalongs who hung onto the back of his bike for dear life. As annoying as he found it, their unanticipated company was inconsequential. He could deal with them. He felt like he could deal with anything right now as his bike barreled across the desert with nothing to see for miles but the hazy silhouettes of mountains in the distance, his grip tighter than a vice and his heart pounding so hard it felt like it might lurch out of his chest.

Or so he thought until Shiro woke up.

They reached his shack in around three hours. As his bike whirred to a gradual landing, it kicked up a gritty cloud of dry dust. He dismounted smoothly and turned to see his new companions slip-sliding as they tried to follow suit. Shiro’s inert body was little more than a ragdoll caught in their flailing.

He cleared a space on his futon while Lance and the short cadet he didn’t recognize struggled to carry Shiro in. Even with his back turned he figured they must be gawking at his wall of maps and photographs, and the slapdash collection of odds and ends he used as furniture.

Slipping an arm between Lance’s chest and Shiro’s back, Keith encircled his waist and let his head loll back against his shoulder. Slowly he lowered Shiro onto the futon. His arms trembled underneath his weight, so much heavier than Keith remembered. At the other end Lance started down at Shiro’s feet where they hung off the edge, then propped them up on a stack of old books Keith bought at a thrift store ages ago but never read.

The three of them sat in silence, huddled in the cramped space. Seeing Shiro here in the shack Keith had settled in by himself after the Kerberos mision, being able to touch him again--the rush of adrenaline that sustained him during their escape had long since ebbed away, leaving him with nothing to distract the gnawing anxiety that intensified in the hours leading up to the rescue.

Where did they go from here?

For the better part of the past year Keith thought that reunited with Shiro would bring some sense of closure, yet instead he found himself uncertain of what to do or how to feel in the face of what happened to Shiro in their time apart. The most pressing differences were the physical scars, the gash across the bridge of his nose. And his arm . . . how had he lost it and what the hell had replaced it with such a sophisticated prosthetic?

“He said there were aliens.”

Keith’s gaze snapped up to where Lance sat crossed legged on the floor by the stack of books. “Guess you were right, Pidge. Wow. That’s just . . . wow.” He chewed on his lip and frowned when he noticed Keith looking at him. “Where’s Hunk?”

“Tossing his lunch. Breakfast?” Pidge pushed up her glasses and settled on, “He’s outside. Anyway, you’re Keith, right? You really saved us back there.”

“What’re you talking about? We had everything under control,” Lance said indignantly.

“Sure we did. Anyway--”

Keith held up a hand. Shiro was mumbling something, his voice heavy and slurred. He trailed off into silence. Lance said, “Yeah, I don’t think we’re getting anything out of him for a while.”

Keith touched Shiro’s cheek. He brushed back a lock of white hair where it had fallen across his eyes, lingering for long enough that he noticed Lance and Pidge shifting uncomfortably. He pulled his hand away.

Whether Shiro’s words made sense or not yet didn’t matter--just his voice was enough. They couldn’t possibly know what having Shiro back meant to him, and as far as he was concerned they didn’t need to.

Hunk broke the tension by stumbling inside. “Ohhhh man. We are dead meat, you guys, this is--we are _dead_. We are _done_. After this there’s no way we can go back to the Garrison!”

“Welcome to the club,” Keith said under his breath.

“Ohh,” Hunk continued, “what’s the plan, you guys?”

“We never really had one,” Pidge said.

“Yeah we did!”

“ _Lance_ . . .”

A labored groan from the futon cut their bickering short. Keith tensed, waiting to see if Shiro would wake up agitated or hostile. But he continued to lie there limply, looking weak despite his added muscle, and turned his cheek in Keith’s open palm. His eyes stayed closed but his vocalizations became clearer. Keith leaned in to hear.

Glancing up at the others, he asked . . . “Any idea what a ‘zarkon’ is?”

“Beats me,” Lance said. “Maybe it has something to do with the voltron.”

“So what’s _that_?”

“We dunno yet. Pidge heard aliens talking about it on his radio. And we heard Shiro say something about it through the video feed we hacked. Y’know, before you set off those explosives.”

“Show me,” Keith demanded. Pidge cleared a space on his makeshift table and set up her equipment, passing her headphones over to him when she was done.

The recording started abruptly, with Shiro already strapped down as Garrison personnel bustled around him, scanning the cabin as well as Shiro’s prosthetic arm. He recognized Iverson’s voice with a twinge of distaste--the two of them had never gotten along during Keith’s stint at the Garrison, and their parting was particularly . . . volatile. Seeing that he was the one who gave the order to have Shiro sedated did nothing to improve his opinion.

The sheer terror that passed across Shiro’s face as he pleaded not to be put under made Keith’s gut twist. He yanked the headphones off and shoved them back toward Pidge, unable to look away from the screen where Shiro continued to struggle, thrashing against his restraints with a wild-eyed urgency that faltered as the sedative took effect.

Keith breathed hard through his nostrils as he fought to stay level-headed. He wished he had taken a couple extra swings back at the crash site, but that was not what Shiro needed to wake up to, especially not after the Garrison’s initial welcoming. He had to stay calm.

He got to his feet, “C’mon, let’s make some breakfast. Let him sleep.”

Cooking kept them occupied for a while. He only had a coffee maker, a half loaf of stale white bread, and a mini fridge stocked with just a couple of eggs and a near-empty carton of milk. The closest town was over an hour away and he loathed the thought of someone else touching his bike almost as much as he loathed the thought of not being here when Shiro woke up.

Hunk produced a stash granola bars and water bottles from Pidge’s rucksack to add to their supplies, much to her indignation. He and Lance took over food duties from there and crowded around Keith’s hot plate with their meager ingredients. Pidge sat back down at the table and worked on her equipment, earphones firmly in place as she muttered to herself, fingers flying across the keyboard.

Keith propped himself against the arm of the futon and watched Hunk and Lance bicker, glancing back periodically to check on Shiro. He was just about to face forward and tell Lance to watch it before he dropped the egg carton, when Shiro sat up.

None of them said anything as Shiro blinked slowly. His foot bumped into Keith’s hip as he tried to grab hold of the back of the futon for support.

“Are you with me?” Keith asked, half-rising from his seat and touching one of Shiro’s knees cautiously. “Takashi?”

Shiro’s eyes squeezed shut. Thirty seconds passed, then thirty more. He opened his eyes again. His white fringe fell back across his left eye as he stared up at Keith, processing what must have happened for him to wake up in a run-down shack with Keith but nary an Iverson in sight.

In a thick, hoarse voice, he said, “. . . You didn’t.”

“Of course I did.

“Of course.” Shiro’s head slumped down. After a pause he said, his voice muffled by his own shirt, “Coffee.”

“You can have all the shitty instant coffee you want, man,” Lance said, grabbing hold of the entire pot.

  


\-----

  


After breakfast Keith was faced with the task of giving Shiro proper clothes, which was now impossible to do without revealing to a shack full of strangers that he just happened to have Shiro-sized clothes on hand. He told himself he was beyond being embarrassed as he opened his trunk. What mattered right now was getting Shiro out of those alien rags, not any odd looks he may well be imagining.

As one, Hunk and Lanced clapped one hand each around Pidge’s glasses, knocking her headphones off. As she squawked in protest they wheeled around together to all face the wall and give Shiro privacy. Lance gave them a thumbs-up.

Keith may have been imagining it too, but he thought he heard Shiro chuckle as he peeled off his tattered mantle. Underneath was a tight bodysuit made of a foreign material Keith had no idea of how to describe.

Shiro stopped as he began tugging off the top, his eyes cast down at the floorboards before shooting Keith a quick, desperate glance.

He wanted Keith to look away as well and the realization felt like ice being poured down his throat. Keith turned his head to stare out the window. The glass was too grimy for him to make out his own reflection, much less Shiro’s as he undressed. When Keith finally looked back he did so only after hearing the zip of Shiro’s vest.

Shiro was standing straight again, tugging at the hem of the old shirt Keith found for him and tapping the toe of a boot against the floor in a self-conscious way that was as new to Keith as his shock of white hair. He said nothing as he rolled his shoulders. The vest fit more snugly than Keith remembered. Then Shiro stepped outside, crumpling his paper coffee cup in his non-dominant hand and tossing it carelessly in the general direction of the trash can by the door. It bounced off the rim and skittered across the floorboards before coming to a rest by the mini-fridge.

None of them spoke while they ate, even though Pidge especially look like she was fit to burst with questions. After Shiro left they kept looking at each other and then to Keith awkwardly, as if waiting for him to take the initiative. But Shiro was obviously not all there yet and Keith didn’t quite know what to do himself.

“So,” Lance said around a mouthful of toast, “are you guys brothers?”

Ready or not, Keith went after Shiro.

From behind he had no way to discern Shiro’s expression. As much as he wanted to run up the hill he forced himself to walk. More than any of them, Shiro deserved a quiet moment to reorient himself. He was holding his prosthetic arm up, grasping it at the wrist with his left hand.

The way he immediately crossed his arms and glanced at Keith with a casual air that was obviously forced said enough. If it was important to him that he appear composed, Keith would go along for now. He made himself slide his hand from Shiro’s shoulder after a pause, keeping it firmly clenched at his side during the rest of their exchange.

Once they were back inside, after he was done explaining his wall of conspiracy, he was startled to recognize a glimmer of familiar intimacy in Shiro’s eyes, as if it was just the two of them in the room together like old times. Then Shiro turned about to address the other cadets without any further acknowledgement of what Keith had spent a year obsessing over, and Keith wondered if he was being modest or distant.

He wanted to tell Shiro what the blue lion markings meant to him in the months he spent scavenging the desert, piecing together eroded cave paintings and obscure internet articles about the area; how as signs began pointing toward an indeterminate arrival Keith almost tore the whole wall down in a fit of rage, because why couldn’t it be about Shiro? Shiro, who was lost in space, dead, who he finally had to accept would never come back.

He wanted to tell Shiro what it felt like when the last Garrison man fell in the desert, giving him full view of Shiro’s body, how he refused to believe until he touched Shiro’s face with his own hand that against all logic and reason his selfishness had been rewarded. Shiro was home, Shiro was finally home, bearing the scars of a life worse than a clean death. He wanted to tell Shiro that he still loved him.

But this was bigger than him now, and so he held his tongue.


	2. Chapter 2

“I’ll miss you,” Shiro said. He held up a pair of black boxers, appraised them, then crammed them back into the top drawer of his dresser before moving on.

Keith paused where he was trying to wrestle the stack of shirts Shiro needed into his luggage. They sprang up under his momentary give and rained down all over him, the bed, and the floor.

“Uhhh . . .” The sound came out involuntarily. No matter how much he yelled at himself inside his head, Keith’s mouth refused to cooperate and shut up already.

He couldn’t mean it like that. Keith’s fantasizing had gotten out of control in the days approaching Shiro’s departure, and now, as he spent the night helping Shiro triple-check his things one last time, he felt a mountain pressure to tell Shiro how he felt. Holding him back was the fear that he should have said something earlier and not waited until the night before the launch, because even if said anything then what would it matter even if Shiro felt the same way? They couldn’t exactly date after this, not for at least half a year, and what if the distance changed things?

Factoring in all those other anxieties, the best solution was to not say anything. Pretend that Shiro’s voice didn’t make his stomach do backflips or that his eyes didn’t make Keith feel like he was in a spotlight. But it was so hard to hide how felt from Shiro when Shiro seemed to always pick up on his emotions no matter how hard he tried to act natural.

“Same,” he said, barely resisting the urge to cram all the shirts into his fat stupid mouth.

Shiro turned around, shutting the drawer behind him and leaning back against the dresser. He was still in his new uniform, courtesy of the promotion that came with being selected to go into space. It should have made him look more mature and yet now that he was facing Keith he seemed so vulnerable and unsure, everything Shiro took care not to be when other people were around.

But it was just the two of them here, and as much as that implicit trust made Keith feel proud, it also made him feel even more discombobulated. He felt like he was deceiving Shiro by pretending to just be his friend when in reality he wanted something more.

“Nervous?” Keith asked. They might show it in different ways, but it wasn’t hard to see that Shiro was finally starting to stress out about the launch. Shiro nodded. His arms were crossed and he squeezed his left tricep hard, like he always did when he was worrying about something. The jitters. “Hey, the Holts are in good hands with you at the helm. You always--”

“You aren’t making this any easier,” Shiro muttered, as if annoyed. He glanced up and saw Keith’s expression. “Shit, Keith, I didn’t mean--I’m sorry, it’s just--”

Keith made himself laugh it off. “So, you are nervous,” he said as he folded one of Shiro’s tank tops back into the duffel bag,

“Well . . . yeah,” he admitted.

“You’ll do great. Trust me.”

Shiro sat down heavily at the foot of the bed. He watched Keith fold, still squeezing his arm with thumb rubbing small, slow circles against the sleeve in a methodical, hypnotizing way that made it hard for Keith to concentrate on not looking at him. “Keith, I . . .”

He reached out and took hold of Keith’s hand.

Keith felt himself stop breathing, hesitant, not wanting to hope but what else could he do when Shiro was holding his hand and looking with his gaze focused and intent, boring directly into Keith’s own.

“I love you.”

Even now, a year later, Keith couldn’t remember exactly which one of them said it, or if he imagined it, or if they said it together. He did remember the soft kiss Shiro pressed against his lips, the way he squeezed Keith’s hand tight as if he would never let go.

He remembered it the whole time as he watched the launch from afar, replaying their brief conversation after the kiss in his mind. Waiting was the hardest thing for him to do, but he’d done it this long, and for Shiro’s sake he could do it for six more months, a year, a decade, forever. 

For now, it was enough to just know that whatever they were now, or had always been, that this was something they were shouldering together.

“I’ll miss you too,” Keith murmured. His breath fogged up the window glass as he watched the shuttle take off, watching until nothing was left to see except for the great plumes of exhaust it left in its wake.

So many things could go wrong up there. Keith never worried for himself when he flew. The pressure and danger energized him, made him focus. For him, being grounded and left behind was torture. Nothing could free him until Shiro was back on Earth, safe and sound.

\-----

His only consolation after Shiro . . . after being expelled from the Garrison was the view from his shack’s roof. Away from light pollution the night sky stretched out endlessly, its inky blackness stippled with more stars and planets than he ever cared to keep track of. Shiro could name all of them, if given the chance and enough time.

Shiro would like the shack, Keith thought. True, it was small and he still didn’t have running water or electricity, but it was his.

The night sky infinite and enigmatic. There were so many things Keith didn’t know and would never learn in his lifetime about the universe. Having it spread out before his eyes helped make peace with that fact, even if he didn’t particularly like the thought. The evidence was irrefutable: in the grand scheme of things he was an insignificant dust speck, and he found a sort of freedom in that knowledge.

Up there, anything was possible. Without wreckage or bodies it was all too easy for him to close his eyes and believe that somewhere out there in the vastness of space that Shiro and the Holts were alive, that there was a chance that somehow, some way, that they would return to Earth and life could go on as normal.

The thought was stupid, but it was all that kept Keith going as he mapped out the caves in the area, sometimes riding his bike from dawn until dusk from one to another, going over the same markings again and again, wondering their significance was other than fueling his stubborn denial that Shiro’s absence was permanent.

He peeled a glove off with his teeth, flexing out his hand above him and blocking out the crescent moon. His life wasn’t over, not by a longshot. He was going to find a way, a purpose, and once he did he was never going to let it go.  


\-----

  
Two weeks into saving the universe, Keith’s impatience won out.

At the training deck, before the other paladins were even out of sight, he grabbed hold of Shiro’s hand. The prosthetic digits were inhumanly cool against his skin, yet still felt alive with a faint thrum of energy that almost resembled a pulse, a seamless union of machine and alien science-magic that mimicked flesh just enough to feel distinctly wrong.

And that, more than anything else that had become of them, drove home the fact that even though Shiro was undeniably back, he was not the same. Neither of them was.

“Last one to the commissary has to clean up!” Up ahead, Lance turned to smirk over his shoulder with his eyebrows waggling challengingly in Keith’s direction, oblivious to the fact that Pidge had climbed onto Hunk’s shoulders and they were steadily leaving Lance to eat their collective dust.

He couldn’t have noticed Keith gripping Shiro’s hand, especially not while whooping after Hunk and Pidge when he did realize he was being left behind, and still Shiro’s low voice cut through the racket like a knife.

“Keith.” A quiet reprimand. _Not here, not now._

It was just his name and it said more than Keith wanted to hear.

With everything else that happened over the past few weeks, the past year, Keith thought just holding Shiro’s hand again shouldn’t have to be this hard. But he let go, squeezing his helmet under his arm as he sped up to oblige Lance’s needling. Shiro’s footsteps were slow and metered, and at his pace Keith slowly but surely left him behind.

Long heartfelt talks had never been Keith’s specialty, and now . . . now he was afraid of what Shiro would ask of him, if he would want them to separate now that they were part of a team, now that there was a year of Shiro’s life he himself could barely remember and that only hurt him when he did. They hadn’t even been “together” in an official sense for that long; they hadn’t even gotten the chance to try.

Keith was fine with distance--he learned to be fine with it, had to be fine with it after the mission went wrong, after having any kind of future in the Garrison effectively nuked. If that was what Shiro still wanted, he could give it to him. But as selfish as it was, he couldn’t bear the thought of being let go, of being alone again for good. He couldn’t put any end to what Shiro meant to him, any more than he could give him a chance to explain himself.

 _Coward_.  


\-----

  
Keith took a seat at the end of the table beside Hunk. Shiro likewise kept a careful but seemingly normal distance, setting his tray down between Pidge and Lance. They both stayed silent. Shiro ate steadily while Keith picked at his plate as Hunk and Lance argued with Pidge over whether Rover should be programmed to bring them refreshments in the training deck.

“Think of it, Pidge. You’re sweating it out and need a cold drink when--voila! Rover already has it for you. Along with a bunch of complimentary snacks. Who doesn’t like snacks?”

“You can’t deny the snacks,” Hunk said sagely.

“Denied.”

Shiro spoke up as they continued to squabble. “You guys need to settle down before this gets cold,” he said around his spoon, ever fastidious about food, as if the goo was any more appetizing while it was warm.

“Yes, Dad,” they chorused.

Shiro sighed in weary resignation at the nickname and helped himself to more goo.

Keith loved that about Shiro; he was attentive by nature and he loved being with people, qualities that endured even now.

Keith was not “people.” He knew he was difficult to be around, for whatever reasons. The few classmates at the Garrison who thought his being a good pilot meant he would make a good friend all had their hopes dashed quickly, and Keith soon learned not to get his up at all.

For him, being by himself had been natural. Even before this Voltron mess, being with Shiro had never been easy, but now he couldn’t imagine what he was like before they met.

There wasn’t an exact moment when he remembered looking at Shiro and realizing he saw him differently, as much a lover as a friend. For Keith, being vulnerable enough to open up to someone else was so rare that there was never a doubt that Shiro was special. What surprised him was learning Shiro felt the same way.

Keith pushed back from the table, leaving his uneaten goo for Hunk and Lance to scavenge. Shiro didn’t even look his way as he left.

Back in his room he curled up in bed, turning his knife over and over in his hands. Becoming a paladin was the purpose he’d been looking for since his life on Earth fell apart. Far from abating, his feelings had only grown since Shiro left for the Kerberos mission and they were separated for a year, and now those feelings were intertwined with being part of team Voltron.

He needed something to take his mind off things. He thought about going back to the training deck and work out for another few hours, or maybe he should take a long soak in the giant open-air bath. Coran said they had one somewhere in the castle. Just finding it could be a a workout of its own. If all else failed, he could just take Red out for a bit of solitary contemplation like he used to do on his bike in the desert.

With Red there was no talking, only sensation. Instinct. When he opened his mind for her, she accepted him as he was. Yeah. Bonding with his lion seemed like the best option. He swung his legs over the bed and headed for the door, right as a knock sounded.

He backed up cautiously. _Coward, coward, coward_. Logically he knew what he should do, but he felt petrified by what ifs, by a conclusion to a conversation he had run through his head enough times to make him sick.

After a few moments of silence, Shiro knocked again and said, “Keith, we need to talk. Please.”

Shiro never made Keith do something he didn’t want to, but that was because there was nothing Keith wouldn’t do for him. He set his knife aside, bracing himself. He was scared, scared of his own weakness, scared of what Shiro was about to say. Shiro deserved better from him.

When he opened the door, Shiro stayed put in the doorway and looked down at him. His face was so lined, his expression so tired, that Keith felt twice as mad at himself for sulking.

He was about to apologize when Shiro leaned down and kissed him, a quick peck, on the cheek, and backed him up into the room.


	3. Chapter 3

Neither of them said anything as Shiro pulled back. The kiss had been slow and lingering and chaste, just like the first one they shared in Shiro’s room before the launch, before the many desperate ones that followed it.

Keith had no idea how to respond. The room was too somber for him to hope.

Shiro held his gaze. “I’m sorry about earlier. On the deck. I just . . . didn’t think anyone should know.” He crossed his arms, biting at his lip for a moment.

“Know about what?”

“About us.”

“Is there even still an _us_?”

Shiro took hold of Keith’s wrist and pulled him to the bed.

Keith remained standing as Shiro sat down, glancing up at Keith as if waiting for him to sit as well, then let go of his hand with a heavy sigh when Keith only tightened his jaw, staying put.

“I still care about you,” Shiro said. “As my friend and my teammate. I always will. And I still wish . . . I wish we could be together. Normally, I mean.”

“Why can’t we just--just pick up where we left off?”

“Keith . . .” Shiro buried his face in his hands. A long pause followed. Keith felt his pulse jump into overdrive just from the silent anticipation of what he would say.

But Shiro said nothing.

“Shiro, I know you’ve been through a lot. And I know I’ve been kind of selfish lately.” Keith looked down at his palms. “But I . . . I need--”

He felt the tears prick at the corners of his eyes, hot and stinging. He had always been afraid of his own emotions. He felt too much, too fast, and more often than not they swept him away before any rationality could form to keep them in check. It was as much a weakness as it was a strength. He wanted to be strong enough for this. For Shiro.

“I need you,” he admitted, wiping angrily at his eyes with the back of his hand. “I sort of lost myself after you disappeared. I was angry. You know I’ve never been good at dealing with . . . with _any_ of this--” He gestured at himself aimlessly. “--on my own. And you--”

“Keith,” Shiro said again, softer than before.

“--you mean _everything_ to me.”

No one deserved to bear the responsibility of his feelings like this, Keith thought. Not Shiro. Not when he had his own problems to worry about.

The past year had done something to Keith, made him desperate for answers, for something that could make things go back to the way they had been before the Kerberos mission. He took Voltron and Galra threat in stride. If this was the path his life must take in order to have Shiro back, he would take it gladly.

But there was no such thing as having Shiro back. The Shiro he knew was changed, perhaps for good. This whole time he had been waiting for someone who would never return.

“I’m afraid of myself.” Shiro’s confession was soft. “I’m afraid I can’t do right by you or the team the way I am now. I can’t go back to who I used to be like this.” He turned his right arm over, light glinting off the metallic surface, highlighting the seams at the elbow and between the joints of the fingers. “I don’t know if I can ever go back to who I used to be. The last thing I want to do is make a promise to you that I might not be able to keep someday.”

There was suddenly a void where all the anxiety and fear had coalesced since coming to space. Keith felt the same numbness he had when the Kerberos mission was first announced to be a failure, when his entire being refused to accept the truth before him.

“I . . . understand,” he said, his voice shaking.

Shiro rose to his feet, resting his hand on Keith’s shoulder as he pressed their foreheads together. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Keith, I’m sorry.” And then he left.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because I started writing this fic back when only s1 was out and we're five seasons in now, I decided to make adjustments to include events like Keith leaving for the BoM and Shiro going missing A G A I N. Thanks for reading.


	4. Chapter 4

After a few days, life on the space whale settled into a routine. After a few weeks, it became monotonous. Six months in, Keith wondered not for the first time why he and Krolia hadn’t stopped to ask for backup from the Blade of Marmora before they flew headfirst into the temporal abyss.

In the desert, mind-numbing chores were all that kept Keith focused in the year after being expelled from the Garrison. But now as he scrubbed his only set of clothes clean he was frustrated, because here in the isolation of the abyss there was no way to gauge whether they were making any progress. 

And if they weren't, they couldn't do anything about it. They couldn’t return to the team. They couldn’t call for help. For all they knew, they could be marooned here on this whale for the rest of their lives.

The saving grace was that this time, he wasn't waiting alone. All he had to do was glance over to where Krolia was tending their fireplace to remember that. It was a strange thing to think to himself _my mom is back_. By comparison, interstellar warfare had been so much easier to take in stride.

Cosmo gave a soft, high pitched whine and set her chin on Keith’s naked thigh. She detested the water and kept pawing at his leg, wondering why he was willingly subjecting himself to it. One misguided attempt to bathe her was all it took for Keith to accept that teleporting space wolf cubs had a _thing_ about water. She still didn’t seem to understand that licking Keith's hair at night wasn’t enough to keep him clean.

Krolia gave a sharp whistle. Cosmo's ears perked up; with a sharp popping sound she was gone, leaving what felt like a cloud of tiny ice particles in the space where she had been. “Food’s ready when you are, Keith. You, too, Cosmo. Who’s a good girl?”

Keith wrung out his uniform a final time and spread it out on the rocks alongside the shallow pool of collected water on the ground--technically the whale’s back. Keith had tried so hard to not think too deeply about the whole space whale ecosystem thing. 

He tugged on the makeshift pair of pants Krolia had fashioned for him from whale leaves and joined her in the cave, where Cosmo was batting a large chunk of whale root between her paws.

“S’good,” Keith said, choking the stew down. None of the food they managed to make here was particularly appetizing. All it really did was make him long for some of Hunk’s home cooking.

He thought about the team a lot now. Once it became clear that their mission was going to take a lot of time and even more patience, there really wasn't much else to occupy his time with, apart from the occasional glimpses he had into the past or, less rarely, the future. 

None of the glimpses made much sense without context, and just like waiting on the whale, it was impossible to guess _when_ any future events would occur. The cycle of frustration was starting to wear him out, even with Krolia and Cosmo’s presence to alleviate the worry.

The fire sputtered when Krolia dropped her bowl. She held a hand to her temple, grimacing, her sharp teeth glinting in the firelight. Keith recognized it as another episode of seeing through time and went back to eating. 

He was curious, as always, but there were some things they hadn’t shared with each other, at least not right away. Even after six months they were still trying to figure this mother-son relationship out.

“Keith,” Krolia said faintly when the episode passed, “who is Shiro?”

“The leader of Voltron. One of my teammates. Remember?” Keith told her everything he could think to say of the team when they first entered the abyss. After she had the vision about his father’s grave, she asked who took him in. He gave little detail on what life in the foster system was like, focusing more on meeting Shiro and joining the Garrison.

He had talked a lot about what the Garrison was like, feeling embarrassed when he realized their fire had burned low, almost to embers, and that Krolia had not spoken for several minutes. Afraid that he’d bored her right to sleep, he skipped past what life after being expelled was like and instead focused on how they found the Blue Lion and became Voltron.

“Sorry,” he’d said after recounting finding the Red Lion. “I guess you already know all this.” The Blade must have kept her informed on Voltron’s movements long before Shiro’s memories of Ulaz returned.

She had chuckled then. “Don’t apologize, Keith. It’s just . . . it’s good to hear your voice. I spent so many years wondering how you were doing. I'm glad.”

Now Krolia’s face was pale. Keith’s heart sank, thinking of the short vision he had of what must have been a future confrontation with Shiro. _Hello, Keith._

Had she seen something related to that? Was Shiro okay? The menace in his eyes and the coldness in his voice had been so frightening in how inexplicable it was. “What did you see? Does something happen to him?” 

_Is he okay?_

She shook her head. “No, I . . . I saw your Trials.”

The Trials of Marmora felt like they happened a lifetime ago and yet he could still vividly remember his hallucination, both of his father, and of the not-Shiro manifested by his anxiety and fear. He learned after the fact that it hadn’t been real, but the hurt and confusion remained for several days.

“He didn’t mean it. I mean, that wasn’t even really _him_ , it was me. I imagined it. When I learned that my knife was Galra I just started worrying--”

“You love him,” Krolia said, just like that.

Cosmo turned her head in his lap, snuffling in her sleep. Keith set his own bowl aside and scratched her on the underside of her chin.

“I . . .” His voice caught in his throat. He had tried so hard not to think about how much he missed Shiro in the months since they first came into space, since Shiro came to his room and had essentially broken up with him. 

Losing Shiro in their second battle with Zarkon had been harder than losing him the first time, and it took all of Keith’s willpower to not let his feelings dominate everything as he tried to focus on keeping the team afloat during Shiro’s recovery.

Shiro stayed in his room for almost a week, even after spending time in the healing pod. It wasn’t like when he came back from the Kerberos mission, when they were first brought to space and the Galra threat was new, immediate, demanding that they act first and adjust later. Keith saw then how hard keeping up a brave face was for Shiro. How isolating it was. And he’d vowed to put his own feelings second, because what mattered was Shiro being able to heal.

“I do,” he admitted. “Of course I do.” His feelings had never changed, never wavered. But he had kept them suppressed after leaving the team to focus on his work with the Blade of Marmora, and after a while ignoring them had become easier than dealing with them.

Krolia shifted, moving closer to him by the fire. “Comforting has . . . never been my strong suit,” she said haltingly. “But . . . I know what it’s like to be in love. And I know what it’s like to give it up. Keith, I would never want you to have to do what I did.”

“We’re fighting a _war_ ,” he said thickly. “He doesn’t have time for me, I’m just a distraction.”

“Did he say that?”

“No, but--”

“Then what _did_ he say?”

Unpleasantly, Keith couldn’t remember what Shiro’s exact words were, only the miasma of guilt and hurt he’d felt in the aftermath. Instead the glimpse he saw of the future came to mind again, Shiro’s dark form staring him down with hateful eyes and his dead, mechanical voice. _Hello, Keith._

And he remembered.

“. . . He said he was afraid of himself.”

The fire crackled in the silence. Cosmo yawned in her sleep, paws twitching in an imaginary chase.

“All I know,” Krolia said quietly, “is how the Empire can break you. And how that is especially true for anyone the druids take an interest in. I know what it’s like to shoulder that burden alone.”

She set a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for telling me, Keith.”

Cosmo rolled over in Keith’s lap, her whiskers tickling his chest. Keith stroked her fur, feeling the same icy feeling that happened whenever she teleported.

“Thanks, Mom,” he said.

Krolia’s hand tightened. “Keith--”

“I’m gonna go for a walk. I need to just . . . I need some time by myself.”

“Of course.” She let go. “Whatever you need.”


End file.
